I can’t see anything, DBM barks orders at me one after the other, I can’t tell the difference between good white wind effect and bad identical white wind effect. I don’t know what downwind means and what upwind means. Everything looks 100% the same.
How can I not die?
Bad wind is red, unsure about the color of the buff ( perhaps green? ).
When he does his explosion you need to go to one of the circles that shoots you upward to avoid the wave.
There are these little wind particles that fly in a direction. Stand so that those wind particles are at your back.
When he puts a big swirly on the ground it will explode into a ring that slowly goes outward. You need to be knocked up into the air by the small whirlwinds, run into one before the wave hits you and it will knock you up into the air. You have to time it so that you don’t get knocked up too early though, run into a whirlwind ideally right before the ring hits you.
Wind → You → Boss = Good
Boss → You → Wind = Bad
Stand between where the wind is coming from and the boss, dodge the frontal, and then use the circles to jump in the air before the shockwave hits you and that’s the dragon boss in vortex.
You want the wind at your back.
(People over-complicate this.)
((Also turn off DBM.))
by not wanting to die
Upwind/Downwind: Throughout most of the fight, a wind will blow across the entire arena. This is NOT the circles on the ground, there is a graphical effect across the whole screen that looks like white, shooting stars or gusts of wind. The direction of these gusts changes throughout the fight, and the tl;dr is you ALWAYS want to stand between Altairus and the direction the wind is coming from. Usually, if you’re facing at Altairus (you should be) this means the wind will be at your back, blowing TOWARDS Altairus. This gives you a buff and minimizes damage. If Altairus is between you and the origin of the gusts, that is, if the wind is coming from in FRONT of you, you will take tons of constant damage and be debuffed. So you always want the wind “at your back” (in relation to Altairus, actual facing doesn’t matter, only positioning)
Small Circles: If you stand in a small circle, you will take damage and be knocked up in the air. USUALLY you want to avoid these circles, because taking damage and being knocked up in the air sucks. So always keep an eye out for where these are, and try to avoid them until…
Large Circle: Altairus will intermittently place a circle at some random point on the arena that starts to grow larger and larger. Getting hit by the edge of this expanding ring will do EXTREME damage, so you want to avoid it. The way you avoid it is, first, don’t panic. When you see the circle starting to expand, look for one of the little circles above, and stand close to it. What you have to do is WAIT until the expanding big circle’s edge gets pretty close to you, then walk inside the small circle. The small circle will do a little bit of damage to you (can’t avoid it, that’s the mechanic) and knock you up in the air. Usually this is bad, but because you are up in the air for a few seconds you are safe from the EXTREME damage of the large expanding circle. When you land, just make sure to quickly reposition yourself to have the gusts from Step 1 at your back again for the buff and reduced damage.
tl;dr 1) Always have the screen-wide wind blowing TOWARDS Altairus from BEHIND you. 2) Always watch for Altairus to put down a circle that starts to slowly expand over the whole arena. 3) When he puts down the expanding circle, stand near one of the small circles, wait for the big circle to get close, then jump into the small circle to get blown up in the air and avoid damage from the large circle. 4) When you land, go back to step 1 and position yourself so the screen-wide wind is blowing TOWARDS Altairus from BEHIND you.
Can you draw a picture instead?
this explains the majority of it. if you are dying, you can generally ignore the upwind / downwind mechanic until you get used to the other ones. something that kept getting me killed was a hidden mechanic that if you get too far away from the boss you pretty much instantly die. stay close to the boss, use small whirlwinds to bounce yourself over the ring. focus on those 2 mechanics, once you have them down, worry about upwind and downwind as its just a haste buff / debuff and wont kill you like the other mechanics.
being downwind also gives you a DoT though, and can be pretty brutal during tyrannical.
I’m curious what happened on OP’s latest VP run. Nearly 20min between Altairus and Asaad kills.
true, but if OP doesnt know the mechanics, hes probably not busting out keys high enough where thats a major issue ><
I’m confused, what does pokemon have to do with this?
One other thing that this fight does is flip the usual boss fight concept on its head: as DPS, if the tank is correctly positioned, you don’t want to stand behind the boss. Because that means that you will have the wind hitting the face of your character. This is bad. You want the wind icons - streams of wispy white - hitting generally behind your character. Thus, if the tank is correctly positioned, you can use them to help orient. Obviously I think this will ultimately hurt gameplay because it will require you to look at too many “targets” and probably cause you to miss reading the important boss cues, but it can help in the beginning.
There is no frontal cleave on this boss. But there is a well telegraphed frontal cone the boss does.
Also, one more thing (and this is much more esoteric), if you recall those trash mob dragons with the green puddles, you can kinda fight those like Altairus. Stand in the green puddle, where, if the tank is playing correctly, the tank will also be standing. You can use that green circle position to give you an analog as to where you can stand and still be effected by the tailwind on altairus (it’s a hemisphere like Dread has drawn out). This - to some degree - helps prime you to stand near the tank for Altairus. (Yes, there’s no green puddle, but that dragon mob has the same frontal cone attack, too).
Just want to say thank you to the people who explained how to do fight instead of " get good noob" 
We’ve got some good souls around here. 
Move until the buff goes from red to green.
When the circle on the ground begins growing, get in tornado to avoid it
Let’s be real here. Every mechanic in that fight is white. Anybody who has even mild eyesight problems might struggle. I have bad eyes, but my eyesight is pretty good with corrective lenses.